I try to lift my head, but the pain in my stomach flares sharp and mean. My throat burns. Nothing comes out.
“She’s reacting,” the doctor says quickly. “Keep her still. We can’t risk tearing the internal sutures.”
Dima’s voice drops low, close to the bed. “Mary, you hear me? Don’t move. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
Safe.
The word barely lands before Lev speaks again, voice tight. “You’re sure? About the baby?”
“Yes,” the doctor says softly. There’s a faint rustle—the scrape of her shoe on tile, maybe, or the shift of her coat as she moves closer to the machines. “There’s a heartbeat. Weak, but still there. If she rests, it might stabilize. But any stress—any sudden movement—could cause another hemorrhage.”
Another silence, heavier this time.
Then Boris speaks, quiet and even, like he’s holding himself together by the syllable. “We keep her calm, then. No visitors. No stress.”
Lev clears his throat. “No one tells the boss yet. He’ll lose his mind.”
The doctor sighs. “Mr. Malikov’s already been notified. I’ll be checking on him next.”
Anton.
The sound of his name punches through the fog.
Alive. He’s alive.
It hurts to breathe, but I do anyway. I want to see him. To tell him— What? That somehow, between all the blood and bullets, there’s life?
My lips part. Nothing but a whisper slips out. “There’s life… inside me,” I think I say. Or maybe I just think it.
The darkness takes me again before I can find out.
I’m at my desk.
My badge dangles from my neck.
The chipped laminate. The drawer that sticks. The chair that wobbles if I breathe wrong. Fluorescents hum overhead like a headache you can’t swallow away. The printer coughs. Someone laughs three cubes down, the sharp, mean kind that sounds like a fork on a plate.
My inbox is a wound. Fifty-eight unread. Dave has forwarded three client issues with “handle” in the subject line, no details, just attachments that don’t open unless you threaten them. Stephanie walks by in those heels that announce her fourteen seconds before she arrives. Her perfume is sugar and something sour. She taps my mug with one nail, like she owns the ceramic, like she owns me.
“Mary, you know what you should try?” she says, already not waiting for an answer. “Foundation with yellow undertones. You always look kind of… tired. Or sad. Maybe a bit of both?”
She laughs like it’s friendly. “And a pop of color wouldn’t hurt. That cardigan’s giving ‘substitute teacher.’”
I’m pissed, but I laugh with her anyway. Because that’s what I do. I’d rather keep the peace than start a war I’ll have to clean up later.
That’s who I am.
Orwas.
Something doesn’t feel right. I don’t know what. Just a faint hum under my ribs, like the air’s shifted a degree to the left and I’m the only one who noticed.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. The letters blur. For a second, I forget what I’m doing.
Evan texts:
Can’t do dinner tonight. Work thing. Rain check?
Rain check. My stomach makes that small, cold drop. Not a fall. Just a reminder that gravity exists.
